


omnis cellula e cellula

by twnkwlf



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Accidental Baby Acquisition, Adoption, BAMF Stiles, Babies, Botany, Canon Compliant, Family, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Future Fic, Kid Fic, M/M, Magic, POV Stiles, Police Officer Stiles Stilinski, Pregnancy, Protective Derek, Spells & Enchantments, Witches, Wolf Derek, Wolf Derek Hale, found a baby
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-21
Updated: 2015-06-30
Packaged: 2018-03-02 15:07:13
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 15,296
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2816576
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/twnkwlf/pseuds/twnkwlf
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“You put the diaper on backwards,” Derek says.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. botched witchcraft

Kira gives birth at home in one of those blow up kiddie pools that Stiles will never be able to look at the same after tonight.

“When a woman gives birth, the pack shares the labour,” Derek had explained, which is why Malia, Scott, and Derek keep their hands somewhere on Kira’s body for the 11 hour labour, leaching the pain. When it gets really intense, Scott climbs in behind her, wearing an old pair of swim trunks and wraps his arms around her swollen belly. Kira seems more relieved than crowded, laughing a little as Malia’s arm flares with black veins of _actual labour pain_.

“Werewolf epidural,” she calls it.

Stiles isn’t in the room when the baby comes. He and Lydia are in Scott’s kitchen making coffee and avoiding eye contact when they hear the piercing wail of a newborn. Stiles drops his full mug in the sink and practically runs back to where the action is, thinking, _I missed it_.

The baby is chubby and has tons of dark hair. He’s tucked against Kira’s chest, wailing, still connected to the chord, and Stiles would normally find that kind of gross, but there’s a bigger part of him that’s actually marvelling at the miracle of childbirth. Everyone is crying except Derek and the midwife. Stiles wants to cry, too, when Scott looks up at him.

When Stiles gets to hold baby Jack, he locks eyes with Derek across the room. Derek is a little warmer, a little softer around the edges than he was when they were in high school, and it’s more noticeable to Stiles now that he’s got a baby in his arms and none of their lives are in immediate danger. They haven’t been in a while.

Derek doesn’t try to hold Jack or dote over him like Malia and Melissa are. He hovers around and watches, helps the midwife move Kira to the bedroom. Stiles wonders how long it’s been since Derek has held a baby.

It’s almost dawn when Lydia drives him home. The jeep wouldn’t start because it’s old and barely hanging on by a thread, and he knows he should just trade it in and get a real car that starts more than 60% of the time, but Roscoe has sentimental value that goes beyond the fact that it was his first car. He’s lived and died a thousand times over n that jeep.

There’s an awkward silence at first. They haven’t spoken since the last time they were both in town-- Christmas, or Easter maybe, and he didn’t think the distance would stifle things like this. She’s been pulling away lately, missing pack dinners and parties, avoiding Beacon Hills more than Stiles, which is saying something.

Sitting in her car, staring at her profile, he loves her, always has, and probably will no matter how old they get. He loves her, but it’s changed.

The air in the car changes, too, when Lydia winces, lifts her hand from the steering wheel for a moment, lets it float beside her head like she wants to punch something.

“What’s wrong?” he asks.

“I hear…” She shakes herself like you do when you’re hit with sudden shivers.

When she pulls the car over, she rests her head on the wheel and whispers,

“The woods, the woods…” Like a chant. “There’s something in the woods.”

“Um...should we call…someone?” That proverbial someone is usually Scott, but their alpha is currently in bed with his hour-old son, and he doesn’t know what the protocol is. Lydia, sensing his trepidation, shakes her head.

“No…” She grits her teeth. He can tell she wants to scream by the whites of her knuckles and the tightness of her voice. “Maybe Derek? Scott can’t-- we can’t call them. Maybe we should call Derek.”

It’s been a long time since they’ve dealt with something banshee-related. Something death-related. Stiles is a little scared. It opens that little well of fear at the bottom of his stomach. He tries his best to fill it. He was better at filling it when he was in high school.

He calls Derek.

  


***

 

Deep in the woods, Lydia shivers next to him, stepping through mud without the usual complaints on behalf of her expensive shoes. The bad energy is rolling off her in invisible waves.

“Are you sure that we’re going in the right direction?” Stiles tries to ask for the seventh time. They’ve been walking towards _something_ for almost a half hour and Derek still hasn’t shown up. He very much hopes that Lydia’s freakish death magnetic attraction isn’t leading them in the direction of the Nemeton-- the remains of it. The stump withered up and died a long time ago, but Stiles would rather never revisit that grave.

“If you ask me that one more time I’m going to bludgeon you with a tree branch.”

They hear a noise that makes Lydia grab Stiles by the arm. Derek comes through the foliage from behind them, looking dark and tired as always.

“It’s this way,” Derek says, jerking his head to the left.

“ _What_ is that way?”

“Blood. I smell it.”

He’s defenseless. His San Francisco Police Department standard issued .22 is locked up in his dad’s gun locker at home. Not that a normal .22 caliber will do much in the face of another monster. All he has on him is his badge. Monsters don’t care about the law.

“I can’t believe I’m putting my life in you hands again, Derek. It’s really nostalgic.”

“You shouldn’t even be out here. You should have let me scout the area first.”

“Well, we’re out here,” Lydia interjects. “And as much as I’m loving this little horror show reunion tour and all the witty banter that comes along with it, I’d like to find the goddamn dead body, and get the _hell_ out of these woods forever.”

Stiles hears it in her voice, underneath the snark, a deeper frustration. She’s been pulling away from the pack for years and this is why. They’re young, 25, but they’ve retired from supernatural danger. Everything was supposed to be weddings, and babies, and cupcakes from now on. This is the rug being pulled out from all of them.

They keep walking until dawn starts to break, turning the woods a deep blue color. It reminds him of the night he took Scott out here to find one half of Laura Hale, the night that started everything, really. It’s beginning to mist a little, getting colder, getting brighter with every step. And then, just as Stiles is about to ask how close they are to the body, for the second time that night, the wail of a newborn cuts through the air.

Derek is faster. He gets there first.

_There_ is exactly where Stiles was afraid they were going-- the clearing that surrounds the twisted, charred remains of what used to be the evil tree stump from hell. It looms behind them, behind the gory scene in front of them. Stiles takes in a lot of things at once.

First, it’s the naked dead body of a woman, ghost white and face up to the tree coverage above them. Her stomach is puffed and swollen like Kira’s, eyes open wide, mouth agape.

Second, it’s the blood markings on her body, things that Stiles doesn’t recognize, and briefly considers whether its celtic or voodoo. There’s a blood red arrow finger-painted onto her swollen belly. There’s a single slit along her throat, a pool of blood staining the dirt all around her.

Third, it’s the umbilical cord that grows from between her legs, coming out of the bloody, dark place in between her thighs. It looks just like how Kira had been earlier that night, but more disgusting in every way. There’s a baby on the other end of it, lying on the ground, also white, but squirming in the dirt.

Lydia was right. It’s a fucking horror show.

“Oh, God,” she says. She backs herself against a tree, as far away as she can get.

“There’s mountain ash--” Derek starts, frantic, edging close to the baby, but unable to touch it with the barely noticeable ring of dark monkshood that Stiles hasn't encountered in years. It takes a few seconds for everything to click, for his brain to catch up with the situation, until Derek shoots him a crazed kind of look that bursts that stoic, calm facade he’s been wearing for the past eight years. And Stiles realizes that’s exactly what it’s been-- a facade. Maybe it’s not the right time to be so suddenly perceptive of Derek Hale’s character, he decides, when the baby continues to scream.

Stiles falls forward and breaks the ash line with his toe. He doesn’t feel any sort of spark. He’s played with mountain ash dozens of times and never felt that spark Deaton always talked about.

Derek lets his claws out as soon as he kneels next to the baby, scooping her into one of his arms carefully.

“Your sweater,” Derek says as his claws slice through the cord, close to the baby’s belly. He picks her up and Stiles thinks he’s sniffing her for a second before he yells, “your sweater!” again.

He slips off the hoodie, bows down next to Derek, his back to the body of the mother. He sits there, holding his arms aloft, unsure of what to do next. Derek sets the baby girl gently into the sweater, into his arms. Stiles pulls her close, sits back on his heels. He’s been holding his breath.

“Holy shit.”

“Wrap her up,” Derek says. “Wrap her up tight.”

He pulls the hoodie around her little, shaking body, careful to keep her head propped against his elbow like Melissa had said earlier, when he held baby Jack. She isn’t crying anymore, just wiggling a little, eyes closed. There’s muck and mire all over her.

When Derek stands up, he circles the area. Stiles can’t move a muscle. He can’t look at this baby’s mother. He wants to be sick.

“Are you okay?” Derek asks, and Stiles thinks he’s talking to him, but Derek is facing Lydia, who still hasn’t taken a step toward them.

“What happened here?” she whispers.

“I think it’s...witchcraft.” He comes back toward Stiles, and the baby, and the body. “Botched witchcraft, maybe.”

“A spell? You think someone did a spell? The nemeton is--” Stiles lets his eyes drift over to the black form of the nemeton. They all know what the nemeton is now. They stood side by side as it burned. Witches used to come here. They don’t come here anymore.

“I don’t know. I feel anything...I can’t smell the energy. I should be able to smell it-- if it worked. Whatever they tried, I don’t think it worked.”

They all go silent for a moment.

Stiles takes this opportunity to really feel the weight of the baby. She is much tinier than chubby little Jack. Her eyelids look a little translucent in the early morning light.

Lydia takes this opportunity to remove her cell phone shakily from inside her bra.

“I’m calling your dad," she says to Stiles.

“Lydia,” Derek says, like a warning. “Tell him this is off the record.”

She rolls her eyes, insulted.

“Obviously.”

The baby makes a little noise, a whimper, or gas, or something. Stiles doesn’t know if that’s the noise babies are supposed to make. He kind of wishes Scott was here because Scott has been devouring baby book after baby book for the last nine months, posting links to parenting blogs on his facebook twice a day, and Scott would know what to do.

In the end, Stiles walks carefully out of the woods with the baby in his arms. He’s conscious of every step, every rogue tree root. The baby sleeps almost peacefully the whole time, but Stiles can’t reel in his heart beat. Derek has gone running through the preserve to try and catch a scent of the killer. Lydia stays reluctantly behind to take a thousand photos of every inch of the crime scene. It’s probably dumb to split up, but the sun is fully up now and it all seems less dangerous. It’s more sad than dangerous.  When his dad gets here, they will clean up the mess, wipe away the symbols, make it look like just another innocuous body in the woods. They’ll clean up the morgue records with Melissa’s help. They’ve done this kind of thing before.

When he spots his dad near the treeline, there is a stolen ambulance parked on the side of the road which Parrish and him are leaning against. Kira’s midwife stands nervously adjacent. Her eyes widen when she sees Stiles and the baby coming towards her.

“Give, give,” she says with her thick accent. She’s an omega. She sniffs the baby thoroughly before disappearing into the back of the ambulance.

His arms feel empty.

“And here I thought...well, here I hoped this kind of stuff was over for good,” says his dad, touching his shoulder.

“We got too comfortable, I guess.”

His dad heaves a powerful sigh.

“As long as it’s not the damn vampires. Never again, Stiles.”

God, he fucking hopes not. That had been a nightmare. Vampires are stubborn and tend to leave a lot of gore in their wake. They had to replace the tiles in the shower that year because they had stained them red from washing off the victim’s blood. Stiles shrugs, shakes his head, craning his neck to see inside the ambulance where the midwife is cleaning the baby.

“Well,” his dad says, resigned. “A few years of peace was pretty good. Honeymoon can’t last forever, I guess.”

Parrish and him take off into the woods to work on the crime scene. When the baby cries inside the ambulance, he can’t stop himself from climbing in to be with her. His chest feels heavy with some kind of guilt, some kind of fear. The midwife listens to her heart, sticks things in her mouth, suctions out fluid, cleans and treats her belly button, all while the infant screams. Stiles leans in closer, touches a finger to her kicking leg.

“She be okay,” says the midwife after a long time. She gives Stiles the baby’s blood sample, tells him to take it to Melissa at the hospital even though she can smell no disease, no sickness on the baby. She wraps the baby in warming blankets and Stiles can’t help but feel like they need to do something more, that there’s no way this little thing has come out of the woods without a scratch. She hands him the baby and the her cries die down a bit once she’s settled back in familiar arms.

“She human, no wolf, no creature. Give her bath. Watch for yellow skin color-- for jaundice. I check her tomorrow.”

“Th-thank you.”

“Sweet thing. Poor thing.”

 

***

 

It’s nearly noon by the time they call the body in to the department. Stiles thinks he’ll tell Scott about everything tomorrow, even though he’d like to spare him the stress, Scott would want to know. He has to know. This is his territory. Even with the new baby, he’ll want to help.

The other new baby is currently sleeping in a car seat that Derek has strapped into the back of his SUV. They’re driving on the highway back into town, Derek with both hands on the steering wheel, Stiles anxiously glancing in the rearview mirror every few seconds. The baby hasn’t made a noise since Derek picked them up on the side of the road.

He phones his lieutenant in San Francisco, tells them he’s had a family emergency and needs to extend his vacation days. She’s a hard ass, will probably dock his salary. He shudders to think of the paperwork that will be waiting for him on his desk when he gets back.

He tells Derek to take him home, to his dad’s where he’s staying. Derek went to a Babies-R-Us after losing all trace of a scent in the woods. The car seat surprised him, but Derek somehow knew how to strap the baby in just right.

When they get to Stiles’s house, Derek doesn’t turn the car off right away.

“What is it?”

Derek’s fingers flex on the wheel. He’s biting his tongue.

“What?” Stiles says, irritated. He hasn’t slept in almost 24 hours.

“She needs protection.”

Stiles sneaks another glance at the baby in the back. They don’t know what she was doing out in those woods. They don’t know if she belongs to someone, or if a witch is going to crawl in through the window to take her. Social services isn’t an option until they know. They don’t know anything yet, so Stiles is going to keep her close until they do. Derek’s reluctance to let them out of the car is kind of insulting.

“You don’t think I can protect her?”

“You’re only human.”

“I’ve always been only human. And I’ve saved your werewolf ass on several occasions, if you recall.”

“This is different.” He turns his body to look at the sleeping baby in the back. “She’s more vulnerable. The most vulnerable there is.”

Stiles knows that he’s right, but it’s hard to admit. He wants to be the one to protect her. There’s this voice in his head telling him to pick the baby up, rock her, never set her down again.

“Why don’t you keep watch? It’ll be fine with my dad,” he suggests. A werewolf’s nose is there best asset. Derek can hang around the house, around the woods near the street, pick up on weird scents and movement.

Derek presses his tongue against his cheek like he’s thinking hard about something. He nods once and turns off the car.

 

***

 

Derek got more than just a car seat at the baby store. The trunk of his SUV is filled with diapers, an inflatable bath, bottles, formula, onesies, baby powder, _butt cream_. There’s even a bassinet that Derek makes him assemble while he warms a bottle for the baby.

Stiles watches, screwdriver in hand, as Derek tlts the bottle toward her little mouth. She looks warm and settled in the crook of his hairy arm.

He puts the bassinet in his room, right by the bed, deciding it’s the farthest he wants to keep her from him. Part of him wants to line the house with mountain ash, but there are far too many werewolves in his life.

“I’m supposed to bathe her,” Stiles says when he comes into the kitchen again. He hands Derek a cup of coffee, even though caffeine does nothing for werewolves.

“Do you know how?”

“Do you?”

“There were cubs--” he pauses, like he’s said the wrong thing. “There were a lot of babies around, when I was growing up.”

Stiles likes to imagine what Hale pack was like all those years ago. If he really focuses, he remembers seeing a lot of them in town. He remembers being small and admiring the gorgeous, dark haired, bright looking girls with their arms looped through each other’s. They had a loud presence, whooping and barking at each other in the mall food court, looking like an exclusive club. There were Hales in his school, younger ones that Derek must have taken care of.

He doesn’t like the feeling that settles between them, reminding them both what happened to those babies.

“Derek Hale, the babysitter,” he says.

“I’ll help you with the bath.”

 

***

 

Derek helping with the bath turns into Derek helping with the baby lotion, which turns into Derek helping reassemble the bassinet properly, which turns into Derek helping put the diaper on. Derek Hale, the fucking _babysitter._

“Fold the diaper down so her belly is exposed. The chord needs to dry and fall off on its own.”

“Gross,” Stiles says. The baby is bare assed on his bed, under the fold out diaper mat that Derek bought. He’s thought of everything. Stiles realizes, as he struggles to not touch the sensitive looking belly belly button where part of the umbilical cord is still sticking out, that he knows next to nothing about babies.

“Success!” He says, holding up the newly diapered baby. She looks squishy and unimpressed with everything.

“You put the diaper on backwards,” Derek says, and he fixes it, sitting on the bed next to Stiles. It’s weird how nimble his fingers are on the straps, how gentle he suddenly becomes. Having been on the receiving end of Derek’s punches a few times, Stiles thinks it’s practically a phenomenon.

By the time the baby is dressed in her little soft onesie (it has patterns of little lambs on it... _Derek_ ), Stiles feels like he is going to vomit or pass out. The baby whimpers a little, and he finds the perfect rhythm to rock her with until she’s fast asleep again. Maybe Derek can change a diaper, but Stiles is the motherfucking baby whisperer. He leans back until his head hits the pillow, gently shuffling the baby to his chest.

“She’s good,” he says sleepily, finger trailing down her little back. “She’s good, right?”

He closes his eyes, just for a few seconds. He’s been awake for almost 36 hours now.

“She’s good.” The reassurance eases a knot in Stiles’s stomach for some reason.

“Don’t let a witch kidnap her, alright?”

“I won’t.”

He thinks that Derek is going to leave, then, but a weight settles next to him in the bed and he hears Derek sigh. Whatever. Stiles will let him sleep here-- he’s been awake for just as long as him. After a while, he feels Derek’s finger join him in rubbing it up and down her back, and their indexes meet somewhere toward her neck. It’s a weirdly intimate moment and it just hangs there.

Derek is as close to Stiles as the rest of the pack, he guesses, trading sass and sarcasm almost like terms of endearment. He appreciates Derek because tries the hardest to keep the pack together. State lines and Skype calls get lost in the fray of a long distance pack, but Derek makes it easier. Once in college, his jeep broke down, and he couldn’t make it home for Thanksgiving, couldn’t afford the repairs. Derek sent him a Greyhound ticket in the mail.

Stiles has grown into the pack feelings, the pack politics. He’s not a wolf, but something ties him to Derek, to everyone, and right now, with his finger meeting Derek’s-- he feels like pack. It’s warm, and safe, and comfortable.

The baby’s warm breath hits the exposed skin at his collar, and he falls fast into sleep.

  


***

 

Sometime around 11:00 PM, Stiles wakes to crying.

The baby isn’t on his chest anymore, she’s in her bassinet. He groggily stumbles out of bed and toward her, thinking that Derek must have moved her. It’s probably not safe to sleep with a kid on your chest, when he could smother her, or knock her out of bed, or _anything_. He pinches himself for being so stupid.

“Hey kiddo,” he says, sliding his hand under her neck to lift her up. She wails a little louder. He yawns, irritated. “What’s wrong, huh?”

He smells what’s wrong.

Her diaper is a gross black mess and he remembers hearing Scott say that the first crap a baby takes will be weird in one of his many lectures about baby poop. Stiles manages to not fuck the diaper up this time, half asleep in the dark. He hears movement and voices downstairs, and he remembers that Derek could still be here.

He comes into the kitchen, holding the baby who has stopped crying and is now experimenting with her mouth and tongue, making faces up at Stiles.

Everyone is there but Kira. Lydia, sitting at the table with his Dad, Malia and Scott leaning against the counter, and Derek standing near the sink. There are papers and books spread out around Lydia, and she flips through them with focus, not even glancing up at him.

“Why didn’t you wake me?” he asks Derek as he hands Stiles a warm bottle.

“We just got here,” Scott says, looking tired.

“You should be at home, man. Kira and Jack--”

“I want to get to the bottom of this.” It sounds serious, final. “That girl is dead. And that baby…”

Stiles realizes that everyone is looking at the baby. She lies docile in his arm, taking the bottle, eyes squinting in the harsh light of the kitchen.

“I want to know who would leave a helpless newborn out in the woods like that,” his Dad says.

“Witches. Definitely witches,” Lydia says, not looking up.

“I only smelled one. They were long gone by the time we got there-- the scent was too faint,” Derek pipes up.

“I have a theory,” Lydia says. “I sent Deaton the photos and he agrees with me.”

“What is it?” Stiles leans toward the table, catching sight of the crime scene photos spread out messily among the books. No matter how many bodies he comes across, even in police work, he can’t look at their eyes dead on. The baby’s mother looks up at the camera with a dead stare and he pulls back from the photos, pressing the baby closer on instinct.

“Like Derek said-- the spell didn’t work. I think...I think I would have felt it, too. Especially a spell that requires a sacrifice.”

“It wasn’t another witch trying to bring back his dead wife was it? That guy was pathetic,” says Malia, referring to the last witch mess they had to clean up. That guy had only sacrificed cows, not a big deal, but it was a pain in the ass to the local farmers.

“They weren’t trying to bring back a person. They were trying to bring back the Nemeton.” Lydia says the word with a sharp edge to it.

“Oh, Christ,” his dad swears. “You gotta be kidding me.”

“It didn’t work, right? You’re sure it didn’t work,” Scott asks. There’s a sudden panic to his voice, and if he was a wolf, Stiles is sure he’d hear his heart pick up.

“See this symbol?” Lydia holds up a photo of the body.

As everyone looks while Malia comes over toward Stiles. She gestures to the baby, pushy like always, to get her way. He hands her over and sets the nearly finished bottle down on the counter. Malia smiles, only glancing over at the picture with a little scoff. She acts disinterested in the problem, but Stiles knows that she’s hiding her anger. She was never very good with the crises that involved children. Her instincts to protect would overwhelm her. He sees it in the way she curls her hand around the baby’s leg.

“You need to burp her,” Derek interjects.

Lydia sighs.

“Are you listening? This symbol is a marking of growth. It’s used to help grow herbs that have special properties, things that are charged with magic energy. It’s more for botany than anything-- you find it in witch's gardens, which is why I thought it was so weird to use on a sacrifice.”

“So?” Malia says, passing the baby reluctantly to Derek. Stiles keeps his eyes on him as he throws a dish towel over his shoulder, presses her gently to it, and pats her back with his eyes glued on Lydia.

“So the spell was botanical. I think they tried to tie a sacrificial resurrection with a growing spell.”  

“To resurrect the Nemeton? To grow it back?” Scott asks nervously.

“Yes. It didn’t work.”

“What was with the baby?” Stiles asks. He has the sudden urge to grab her out of Derek’s arms. “Why a pregnant woman?”

“That’s the tricky part. Of the spell, I mean. Death doesn’t create life, not natural life. Only life begets life. The birth was the real sacrifice.”

“That poor girl.” The sheriff rubs between his eyebrows, sighing.

“Why didn’t it work?”

“Deaton thinks that it was the wrong time. The wrong season, maybe. The wrong point in the lunar cycle. The baby’s sex. Maybe the baby came too early...it was messy. It looked too careless to be right...I don’t know.”

“That kind of spell is complex. Any one thing could have ruined that spell,” Derek says. The baby makes a gurgling noise and spits up on his shoulder.

“If they try it again…” Malia trails off, looking to Scott.

Scott shakes his head. He’s been pretty quiet, contemplative while Lydia talks.

He crosses his arms again, saying,

“We’ll stop it. This won’t happen again.”

Stiles takes the baby from Derek again. He’s really gotten used to her weight in his arms. Derek drags his hand along her foot as he hands her over, an almost imperceptible gesture, but Stiles knows it’s affection.

“You all should get some sleep. It’s been a long day.” His dad goes for the bourbon sitting on the top shelf as everyone clears out of the kitchen. He’s got an even longer day ahead of him tomorrow, carrying on the murder investigation at the station.

Stiles pulls Scott aside for a few minutes in front of the door.

“You okay?”

Scott closes his eyes, taking a deep breath.

“I don’t like that this happened here...I--” his breath hitches the tiniest bit. “I don’t know how this slipped under my radar.”

“Because this is Beacon Hills and bad shit happens. Come on, man, don’t pull a Derek and put this all on yourself.”

Scott looks pretty overwhelmed, looking down at the baby between them. He touches her head briefly, looking lorn and heart broken with those puppy eyes that still get to Stiles no matter how red they can turn.

“Now she doesn’t have a mom.”

Stiles thinks of his own mom for a second or two. He knows the feeling and he doesn’t want the baby to.

“I’m going to make sure she’s taken care of, alright?” Stiles means it. He really fucking does. A scary thought enters his brain after he says it.

He’s going to make sure she’s taken care of, even if he has to do it his damn self.

 

***

 

She really likes the purple pacifier. She won’t touch the blue one for some reason.

And she won’t sleep if you put her in the bassinet right away. Stiles has to lie back with her most nights, let her fall asleep to the rhythm of his chest inhaling and exhaling, or with her snug in the crook of his elbow. All of his shirts are stained with drool now. She cries quite a bit when she has nothing to do, but he learns that singing helps. Her favorite thing to listen to is Stiles enunciating the entire guitar solo of “Sweet Child of Mine”. She always grips her own onesie when he does it.

That’s another thing he learns-- her body movements. Babies are pretty limited in their facial expressions, but she kicks when she wants certain things, squints when she poops, goes slack when she pees, holds onto Stiles’s finger when he feeds her.

In one week, Stiles locks down the perfect regimen for every spell of crying this kid throws at him. She will let out free, loud, and endless screams if she’s hungry, as if she wants the entire world to know. He also becomes a master of making bottles one handed while bouncing on the balls of his feet to keep her sated. If she squeezes her fists while she cries, it means she has gas and  Stiles will lift her her legs and press them toward her tummy. He never thought making babies fart would be one of his skillsets.

So one day, when she cries for three consecutive hours, and he’s done _everything_ , he calls his dad at the station

“Dad,” he says on the phone. It’s hard to hear anything through the wailing. “I don’t know what’s wrong-- I don’t know what she wants.”

“Son, sometimes babies just cry.”

“No, you don’t get it, she’s freaking out. I’m freaking out.”

“It will pass. You cried for a week and half straight when you were born.”

“She’s going to do this for a week and a half!?”

She’s still crying when Kira and Jack stop by later that day to say hello. He hasn’t had much time to bond with his new godson, which he feels terrible about because he spent most of Kira’s pregnancy talking to her belly, telling Jack that he would be the “cool uncle” and take him to his first baseball game and let him ride around in the cruiser with the lights flashing.

Kira is naturally concerned and curious about the incident in the woods, but is only able to stay for about five minutes and three sips of coffee because as soon as Jack hears the baby crying, he starts up. Two babies screaming in one room amounts to exponential, migraine levels of volume. He apologizes and kisses her and Jack on the cheek when the go.

She stops crying for about five minutes when the Sheriff comes home for dinner, but as soon as his Dad retreats upstairs to his room, she starts again.

She won’t take her bottle. Her cries intensify when he sets her down. He hardly gets any sleep that night, with her beating her little fists in the air, red faced. In the morning, she’s still fucking crying. His dad looks up at him from the kitchen table, bags under his eyes.

“Any luck with the body?” Stiles asks, filling the bottle with formula powder. He accidentally inhales a mouth full of it and coughs.  

“We’re thinking she was a street kid, maybe. The only pregnant women in the APB don’t fit her description, though.” The Sheriff takes the baby from Stiles while he tests the warmth of the milk. Shifting her in his arms, he says, “The truth is that no one even knows she’s missing, probably.”

Normally, Stiles would be all over this case and throwing himself into an adderall tunnel to find the missing links and figure it all out. It’s just that he has very little motivation to do anything but keep this baby docile. It seems more important.

And anyway, his dad is more than capable. He’s keeping the investigation under wraps. The department doesn’t know the woman was pregnant-- they changed the records in the morgue to make the crime seem as run-of-the-mill as possible. No one knows this baby exists, which leaves them in a grey area. He’s sure his dad would like to know what they’re going to do with the baby. He hasn’t brought it up yet, which is amazing considering the amount of sleep they’ve both lost in the last week. Sometimes Stiles catches his Dad watching him when he feeds her, or when he babbles at her, changing her clothes, like he suspects something of Stiles.

Stiles doesn’t want to think about the future too much. He wants to make it through the next ten minutes without ear plugs.

Around dinnertime, he gives up and calls in the super nanny.

“Derek, dude. She won’t stop screaming. You’d think she was Lydia’s daughter.”

“What do you want me to do about it?”

“Can you please just-- I don’t know, come over. _Pacify_ her or something. I need to shower,” he says pathetically. “I’m starting to smell like a diaper.”

“Spare me the imagery.”

“Spare me my hearing and help me shut her up.” Normally he wouldn’t sound so bitter toward a helpless, cute, little infant, but she’s starting to look more like a little red demon now.

Derek doesn’t argue, which is a surprise. He comes by ten minutes later, lets himself in, and finds Stiles in his room where he’s lying back on the bed. He’s been talking to her, trying to figure out what she wants, hoping the witch who brought her into this world also  happened to instill her with magical talking baby skills. Stiles jumps up carefully, so relieved to see Derek, he could cry.

Derek looks tense, shoulders rigid, until Stiles forces the baby into his arms. He noticeably relaxes, maneuvering her to his shoulder. Like magic-- some of the more benevolent magic-- her cries slow to a stop. She whimpers a little, but Derek smooths his hand down her back and then she shuts up completely.

“Maybe she missed you. Huh.”

Derek does that thing with his eyebrow.

Stiles gets a whole 25 minutes to himself in the shower. The little glass box turns into wonderland. It’s luxurious. Sanitation, exfoliation, the works. He rests his head against the tiles, humming into the spray.

He finds himself wrapping his hand around his dick while he’s still covered in hair conditioner. It’s part of the usual routine, so he doesn’t think twice about it, getting hard fast in the heat of the water. He does it in the shower because the soap usually washes away the scent. Scott always looks at him funny when he doesn’t wash away the evidence. He’s doesn’t even think about the fact that there’s a werewolf only twenty meters away from him until he’s about to come, legs shaking, toes curling into the tiles. He stops his hand for a second because oh yeah, _Derek is in the other room_. Derek definitely can hear the little whimpers he’s trying to hide. Derek will probably be able to smell it if he comes.

But he was so close and all the tension from the past two weeks feels like it’s swollen and about to break.

Fuck it. Even if it is wildly inappropriate. Derek has to understand, right? He must get off, most people do, stoney faced werewolves and all. Stiles regrets thinking that thought because then he’s picturing what it looks like when Derek jerks off. Or more specifically, he’s imagining how he does it. Derek acts uptight enough that you’d think he’s boring, that he has a quick and efficient orgasms, but Stiles wonders if he lets his fingers drift down every now and then, if he takes his time, if all that composure and stoicism dissolves when he touches himself. He wonders how much body hair grows down from that happy trail, if his hole is dark and tight like a secret, or pink, pretty and open. Does he use lube? Does he work himself open and try to come from the inside out? Or does he pump his cock until he’s close, press his finger against his hole right before he comes? Fuck, that would be so...that would be so---

He’s coming, biting his lip as the orgasm cracks through his chest, burns through his legs, gushing into his hand. He feels dirtier than he did when he started showering, watching the come circle round the drain, knowing Derek will be able to smell it.

Derek doesn’t make eye contact with him when he pads back into the room, running the towel through his hair, but the baby is totally and beautifully asleep in his arms and it’s a minor miracle

“You’re weirdly good with babies, you know?” he says while plopping onto the bed next to him. “It’s this odd juxtaposition. Like Arnold Schwarzenegger in _Kindergarten Cop_.”

Derek moves to rest the baby in the bassinet.

“Laura was awful with Cora when she was born. My mother usually left me in charge.”

Derek looks uncomfortable, probably because he definitely knows what Stiles did in the shower. Or maybe it’s because he’s talking about his his dead family. It always seems to come back to that. The silence is a bit awkward, so Stiles says the first thing on his mind,

“Do you realize your sisters have names that rhyme?”

The corner of Derek’s mouth lifts up for a millisecond.

“I had an uncle named Erek,” he says. “And an aunt named Dora. Laura hated it.”

“That’s a weird family tradition, man.”

“My mom was…funny. She did things like that. Made our names rhyme. And...she made us wear weird halloween costumes.”

“Werewolves go trick-or-treating?”

“I was a washing machine once. Laura was a laundry basket.”

He tries to imagine a thick browed little boy, all grumpy and squished inside an obnoxious box painted like a washing machine. Derek looks a little far away, a little nostalgic, which is an odd look on him.

Stiles feels like it’s some kind of grace period where he could ask him anything and he would tell the truth. He remembers being sixteen and frustrated by Derek, who could never give a straight answer to anything, who would demand things like _arm amputation_ and blind trust from him and Scott. He remembers thinking that Derek Hale was an enigma and would always be that way, appearing out of shadows and rubble with snippets of mysterious supernatural knowledge. The years have revealed his secrets. He would run into Derek shopping at Macys, waiting in line in Starbucks, and realize that as much of a mystery as he was, he wasn’t that special. He was just another werewolf in Beacon Hills. He buys overpriced v-necks. He orders chai lattes. He has a childhood. He knows how to change diapers and put babies to sleep.

Stiles has been staring at him for so long that Derek’s face has fallen a bit. He wants to ask him _when did you become a normal person?_

“I have to go,” he says tightly, moving toward the door. His eyes linger on the baby for a few moments before he goes. “Next time she cries like that, try flipping her onto her stomach when you hold her.”

“You know you can come and hang out with her whenever, right?” Stiles says, wondering when it became his responsibility to allow guests to see this baby.

Derek, like usual, communicates with his eyebrows. Stiles takes it to mean that he’ll be back soon.

 

***

 

Later, he’s in the grocery store with the baby in one of those backpack things on his chest, trying to figure out which brand of diapers is the absolute cheapest.

“What do you think? Winnie the Pooh or Sesame Street?”

She looks up at him, sticks out her tongue.

“Winnie the Pooh it is.”

As he scans the rest of the baby aisle for things he might need, but hasn’t thought to buy, he can’t stop thinking about how Talia Hale, grand master alpha of the wise and ancient Hale pack, named her daughters _Laura_ and _Cora_. He’s not sure if Derek had any other siblings that died in the fire, but their names would probably _Maura, Aura_ or _Flora_ \--

“Oh my god, look at her-- she’s so sweet. What’s her name?”

A store manager who is pricing boxes of formula is suddenly up in his face, squinting at the baby as she nods off in the sling. He realizes that the baby has no name yet, that he’s just been calling her the baby as if it’s not important. A faint memory surfaces of the time his mother told him not to name the stray cats that begged on the porch, something about getting too attached.

But he can’t tell the store manager that her name is the baby. He says the first thing that’s on his mind, in a rhyming progression

“Nora.”

And she wakes up a little to mouth at his shirt as soon as he says it out loud. He lifts her little arm and looks down at her. Nora will do.  

Derek will hate him.

 

***

 

Nora is nearing one month old by the time anyone bothers to ask Stiles what he plans on doing with her.

That person is Lydia, of course. She comes back to visit her mother and take Prada to the vet one Saturday afternoon. She brings Stiles a grande coffee with four sugars and an espresso shot, and she brings Nora a dress from a high end children’s boutique in LA, where she lives now.

“When are you going back to San Francisco?” she says. They both sit on the floor of Stiles’ living room as Nora rocks from left to right in this magical baby chair that Derek bought last week. It’s Nora’s new favorite place to be, besides tucked up against Stiles. He touches her foot and avoids Lydia’s eyes.

“Not sure yet.”

“Are you bringing her with you?”

He swallows nervously, takes his hand away from Nora’s foot and runs it through his hair. He never answers Lydia’s question because he doesn’t want to mess up what he has going right now. It’s a weird parallel universe where he no longer spends his days filing paperwork in the SFPD office, instead spends them mastering the art of baby talk and diapers, and his nights camped out on the sofa watching the game with his old man and discussing the case of Nora’s mother. He’s gotten so used to this routine that thinking about going back to work, shuffling drug criminals through the department day in and day out, and sleeping his empty studio apartment makes him feel edgy and nervous.

“You know she’s safe now, right?” Lydia says, drawing him back.

“We don’t know that for sure.”

“Maybe that’s all the more reason to take her out of Beacon Hills.” She crosses arms in a way that reinforces how right she probably is.

 

***

 

A few days later, Stiles wakes from a nap to find Derek and his dad in the kitchen. It smells like meatloaf. There are some papers and files spread out on the kitchen table, but there are also three plates set around them. Derek is steaming broccoli and his dad is rocking Nora back and forth as he lays down forks and knives.

It’s kind of weird, but they’re talking rather heatedly about basketball. Derek shakes his head at everything his Dad says.

“What’s up?”

“Derek here thinks the Lakers are gonna trade Ellington, can you believe that?”

Derek defends this position with statistics that mean nothing to Stiles, so he takes a seat and watches the whole thing with a bit of wonder. His dad hands him Nora as they come to some kind of agreement over another player’s impending retirement from the NBA.

Derek has been hanging around more often than Scott lately, always watching the baby, or coming with more supplies for the baby even when Stiles tells him to stop with the rattles and the mobiles. It's not as if Derek doesn't know the Sheriff as well as the rest of the pack, but he never imagined them carrying on like they're at a sports bar. Cooking meatloaf together. Huh. 

Stiles spots a list of names that he hasn’t seen before amid the papers on the table. He interrupts Derek and his dad’s discussion.

“Hey, what’s this?”

The Sheriff sets down the salt and pepper shakers and looks over Stiles’ shoulder.

“Derek was helping me narrow down a new suspect sheet.”

“What suspects?”

“I’m looking into the surrounding area for botanists, tea leaf readers. Some bookstore owners that definitely dabble in spell trades. My mother used have ties with a few, but others were more aloof,” Derek says. “They’re our best bet.”

They end up eating meatloaf and broccoli while discussing a particular botanist a few towns over whose shop has been closed for almost a month, with the bank foreclosing on the business. Maybe a stagnating botanist makes for some boredom, some desperation, and some on-the-side sacrificial murders. Parish has gone to poke around and try and get some answers, an alibi if he can. It’s hard to conduct suspect interrogation when half the evidence is off the record.

Nora starts to cry halfway through dinner, and Stiles moves to gt her, but Derek is gone before he can get up. He gets her from the bouncy chair and soothes her in the living room. His dad peers over his shoulder to watch, fork paused mid air.

“Hard to believe that guy can turn into a giant wolfman,” he says under his breath. “He’s just a big old marshmallow.”

Derek, who is a werewolf with super hearing, immediately responds from the other room.

“Shut up, sir.”

Stiles chokes on his broccoli.

 

***

 

That night, Nora fusses in Derek’s arms until he deposits her into Stiles’. The room is dark, half moon pouring through the window. Stiles leans back against his headboard with Nora pressed into his neck. She spits and makes contented sounds on his skin that tell him she’s close to falling asleep. A few minutes later, after he’s sufficiently pretended that he’s interested in Stiles’ book collection for long enough, Derek joins him on the other side of the bed. It should be weird, but its not because they’ve done it before.

“You’re getting the hang of it,” he tells Stiles after a few moments.

“It’s not so hard. I never got why people had babies. I thought it would be better to just skip the whole infant part, adopt an older kid, you know? Cut straight to the little league and science fair projects. But I think I get it now.”

Derek hums in agreement.

“Babies, man,” Stiles says while shifting Nora to his arm. Derek runs his hand gently over the top of her head.

“The house was full of them. The old house, I mean.” He clears his throat like there wasn’t a crack in his voice. “My aunts and cousins always got pregnant right around the same time of year. You couldn’t walk a foot without a toddler biting at your ankles.”

“Literally biting?” Stiles asks.

“Sometimes.” Derek’s laugh is soft and breathy. “If they were teething.”

“Werewolf teething.” He imagines little furry werewolf babies, all awkward around their new fangs, throwing tantrums,  biting their parents, and deflating beach balls with their little teeth. 

Derek stops talking and Stiles tries to meet his eyes in the dark, but they’re looking away. It's getting weirdly intimate again, but instead of pretending it's not, Stiles just goes with it. He shuffles over a little, sliding down. This way, he can inch his head over to Derek’s shoulder and have the baby in the middle of them. When he burrows into the warm spot by Derek’s neck, he stiffens.

“What are you doing?”

“Cuddling.”

Derek doesn’t respond, but he relaxes after a minute. Soon after that, he feels Derek’s rough cheek resting on Stiles’ forehead.

He never thought in a million years that he would feel this swelling in the chest, this buzzing in the stomach for Derek Hale, of all people. A warm rush of affection blows through him without warning, and he’s not sure where to place it all.

It’s a bit too much, but he feels content and overwhelmed at the same time. He doesn’t ever want to move from this bed.

Nora is perfect and as close to him as possible. For the first time, since he wrapped her up in his hoodie, he decides not to ignore the pull. He just lets it all in and takes a big, tight breath. It’s a whole lot of gooey, earth crushing love that's hitting him like waves, giving him goosebumps. It feels like a heartbreak minus the pain. He’s just cracking in two because he loves this kid so much, loves her enough that he wants to spend 18 years right next to her, doesn’t even want to think twice about it. He tucks Nora closer to his chest. Maybe it's only been a month, but he's gone on her and he doesn't even care. This could be his life from now on. 

“Derek.” His voice cuts through the dark.

“Yeah?”

“You know I’m keeping her.”

“Yeah, I know.”

Derek runs his fingers down Nora’s back. His hand finds Stiles’ and their pinkies lock like a promise. The Sheriff was right-- he’s really just a marshmallow.

They fall asleep like that for a few hours, dreamless and so warm there’s no need for blankets. 

 

***

 

When they wake up, the window is open and the room is cold. Stiles arms are empty and Nora is gone. 

 

 


	2. a closed circle

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know I have like 12 things on the go right now, but I had this thing nearly finished so I wanted to just get it out before I work on anything else. It's almost a year late, but here you go. There will be an epilogue soon after.

Stiles has a lot of experience with missing persons. About fifteen years of it, as it happens. Once, when his mother’s symptoms had well progressed to severe, she went missing. It was right before his dad made the decision to admit her to the hospital for round-the-clock care. The incident was the catalyst. It was a marker that this was the end of their lives as they knew it. She had wandered out in the middle of the night in a fugue state and had been lost in the woods for almost two days, much like Lydia had done when she was bitten. Except his mother wasn’t a banshee, and Stiles’ best friend wasn’t a werewolf, and he was only eight years old, and no one knew where Claudia was or if she was dead or alive. He watched his father break the tiles of the kitchen counter with his fist when his deputy reported back that the dogs had lost her scent trail. That was the first time he ever experienced that cold fear, like when you’ve misplaced your phone, but a thousand times more heavy.

And of course, then came the endless supernatural parade of horror, always snatching his friends up and hiding them away. Lydia, Derek, Kira, his Dad. Stiles is used to that icy feeling of losing something, losing someone, of having no idea where to look or where to start. What’s more troubling is that he knows the feeling from the inside and out. He’s a cop. He knows how impossible it is to soothe a freaked out mother when her teenage daughter fails to come home after school, when she can barely fill out the report because her hands are shaking so badly. He knows the itchy sadness of watching the days go by without a lead, of watching the case age and dry until it turns cold, until it is filed away with archives of other lost souls on the shelves of the precinct.

Stiles knows what it’s like when they never find that missing person, but he also knows what it’s like to solve the case, that feeling of relief that is sweeter than a drug, when you finally find who you’re looking for, when you get them in your arms, when you get a safety blanket around their shoulders.

They all knew there was only one place Nora could be and it didn’t take much to speed their way out to the preserve, especially when Lydia sent them a text confirming that they needed to get there immediately, out in the clearing where she was born. Stiles and the others threw together a quick formation and plan before trampling through the brambles and overgrown deer paths out to the tree stump, to where everything always seems to lead them. The beacon of Beacon Hills. What a curse.

Nora has only been missing for three hours, but it’s been indescribable, a mess-- a frenzy in Stiles’ brain, so when he hears  the familiar sounds of her small cries echoing through the forest, the relief that spreads through him nearly brings him to his knees.

With his gun drawn, and the other wolves quietly hidden around all sides of the clearing, Stiles presses his back to a thick tree. He listens.

Nora is crying, fussy, imperfect wails that means she’s trying to communicate more than express emotion. Stiles’ entire chest screams out to run to her, but he keeps it at bay. He’s instructed Scott and Derek not to jump the gun on this, to let Stiles do some of the talking first. He’s emphasized this point to Malia twofold. He can feel their presence in the trees, and maybe especially, he can feel that Derek is the closest.

Softly, underneath the sound of Nora’s fussing, Stiles can hear the frantic whispers of thick gaelic in a deep, gravelly voice. There is relief in his heart that they aren’t too late, but now it’s more dangerous than ever. He dares to peer around the side of the tree, into the dark.

His eyes make out two figures. One is lying on the ground near the roots of the Nemeton The other is crouched atop it, and surely, they’re crouching over Nora.

Surely they have some kind of ancient blade in their back pocket and some kind of spell on the tip of their tongue. Stiles decides to move.

As soon as he’s within spitting distance of the tree stump,  he sees that the body lying dormant on the ground is Parish. His arms are bound by twine and some kind herb, and he’s moaning softly, under his breath, but unconscious.

The botanist standing on the tree stump jerks his head up sharply as he notices Stiles slowly approaching the scene. Stiles raises his gun, aimed right between his eyes. Even in the dark, he can make that shot perfectly. He wants to do it now, to be done with it, but the moon reflects off a sharp looking knife that’s in the botanist’s hand. It’s held directly over Nora’s little heart. She squirms on the tree stump.

“Put down the knife,” he tries. He prays that his voice doesn’t shake. It isn’t the time to show weakness.

The botanist laughs a little, husky voiced, cracked, manic, but he doesn’t take his eyes off Stiles. They are black and cold in the dark. The rest of him is grey scale; grey hair, dark clothes and layers, dark etchings of age in his skin.

“You don’t know what you’re toying with,” he says to Stiles. “You don’t know what’s at stake.”

“This isn’t my first rodeo, asshole. Me and that stump go way back.”

“Then you know it has to be done!” the Botanist screams. He sounds fractured, like his focus is ebbing away. Stiles hopes so. A word of the tongue and a flick of the wrist is all it might take for hell to be unleashed on this town again. It’s all it might take for Nora’s sweet, small life to end, amounting to nothing but sacrifice and pain. He won’t have it.

“If it’s power you’re after, you can find it somewhere else. Put the knife down.”

The Botanist shakes his head just a fraction of an inch, like he’s afraid to move. “No, no, no, no-- you don’t know what it was like! You don’t know how ancient...how sacred…”  he trails off for a moment, blinking hard before continuing. “There was a time...before civilization...before this town began, before everything, where the nemeton was… the source of _life itself_. And folk respected its power! They didn’t cut it with chainsaws or-- or-- drain it dry for their own selfish pursuits! There’s an imbalance now, don’t you feel it? The earth was born with the nemeton and we’ve killed it! We have to bring it back. We must...it’s...it has to be done, you see?”

“All I see is a man about to commit infanticide for _a fucking plant_.” He tries to keep the edge out of his voice, tries not to scream at the man. “You’ve got one last warning, guy. Put. Down. Your. Knife.”

The botanist continues to speak as if he hadn’t heard Stiles. “The first ritual failed, but I know why now. The babe’s first breath alone wasn’t enough to ignite growth. She was born, and the birth was the sacrifice, yes, but that’s just the beginning of the circle of life. I didn’t give the nemeton a full life. I left her there, just _started_ , but not _finished_. She wasn’t given a name or a purpose! You name a thing to give it power! You give it purpose to give it lifeforce! I have to finish her life, finish the circle. Close the circle. Give her purpose, give her a name.”

“She has a name!” Stiles shouts.

“Good, good, that's good. So then her purpose is to live and die for the nemeton. A full circle of life, don’t you see it? Why can’t you see? It will grow back...restore the balance...restore it...it’s the right thing-- it’s the right thing.”

Behind the Botanist, a dark shape moves out of the trees. Derek’s growl is low in his wolf throat, completely animal and feral, building and growing louder as he slowly stalks from the coverage. Stiles hasn’t seen the sight of Derek’s wolf in years, big and black, with bright eyes that cut through the dark. It’s comforting now to have that animosity on his side. Derek’s wolf feels like Stiles’ rage embodied in a figure. A snarling wolf.

“You can’t kill me,” the botanist says, looking around his shoulder at Derek’s form. “If you spill blood on the nemeton, you’ll give it a spark again. Then it’s only a matter of time before another comes along to feed the flame and finish my work. You can’t kill me.”

Stiles feels his jaw clench and the words seer through his teeth. “If you even touch my girl with that knife, this wolf will drag you a mile away from this tree and rip your heart out for nothing, I swear to God.”

The botanist wavers then, head down, he drops to another whisper. “Saol óga deireadh anseo, beidh fuil óg sreabhadh anseo--”

His arm moves up, just a small twitch of his hand that raises the knife by a fraction, and Stiles decides to end it.  He fires a shot into the man’s arm and watches in the split second as the knife falls, handle down, near Nora’s head. In that instant, the man screams, and then a thunderous chorus of growling ignites from all around them. He sees Scott and Malia emerge as Derek pounces. The man is knocked forward in a blur, past Parish and onto the ground, underneath Derek’s massive form. Derek presses his paws into his chest and takes hold of the man’s injured arm in between his jaws. He lets out a ragged scream as Derek does what Stiles promised, and drags him into the foliage.  

Malia goes to Parish while Scott chases after Derek into the woods. He’ll probably stop him from killing the man, but Stiles doesn’t care what happens to him either way. His thoughts are singular. He lets the gun fall to ground and he drives himself forward to where Nora is still squirming on the tree stump.

“Come here, come here,” he says as he scoops her into his arms. Her cries break a little as he presses her into his neck and inhales deeply. “You’re alright.”

She’s alright.

He can’t even breathe. His knees buckle and then he’s propelling them forward, in the other direction, as far as he can get from the nemeton and all it represents. He moves past Malia where she’s clawing Parish free from his ropes, past the empty clearing, deep into the forest until he can’t hear the distant sounds of wolves growling and men screaming. Eventually, without much sense of time or place, Stiles has stopped. He kneels on the ground with sharp twigs and damp dirt under him, just holding Nora to his chest and warming her body with his hands. All the trees around them are benign and full of natural life. They’re safe here.

After a few minutes, Stiles finally hears the sound of footsteps behind him. His entire body tenses as he presses Nora closer. She’s quiet now, falling asleep maybe.

“Stiles,” Derek says. He relaxes at the familiar voice.  

Derek kneels into his line of vision, shirtless, a pair of sweatpants thrown on haphazardly after shifting. It’s cold in the woods, but he’s practically steaming with nervous energy and werewolf blood heat. Stiles moves closer to him instinctively.

“She’s okay,” he tells Derek, as if to reassure himself. “I think she’s...she’s fine.”

Derek takes a deep breath, scenting the air and Nora, probably. He leans into Stiles’s space on the exhale, and Stiles matches his movements until they’re using each other for support, foreheads pressed gently together. It’s not strange this time, really, it’s the only thing keeping Stiles from shivering. Derek’s arm moves to touch Nora’s back, her head, the side of her cheek and neck. Stiles feels Derek’s hands finally settle on his arms in a half embrace. His breath is warm on Stiles’ face and they stay like that for a while, long enough for his muscles to let go of the tension and for the sharp air to cut through his t-shirt. They stay that way until Scott and the others find them and maneuver them to the safety of the road and police.

His Dad brings the EMTs to check Nora for injuries and hypothermia. Standing on the side of the road where the ambulances and cop cars light the night up with blue and red, Stiles is reluctant to hand her over to strangers. From the corner of his eye, he sees Parrish talking with some other deputies about his abductor. The botanist has been secured and officially arrested, off to County for incarceration, but Stiles won’t feel like they’re out of danger until he can personally oversee the man’s processing and hear the cell door lock behind him

“It’s okay, son,” his dad says when the EMT has to ask twice for him to had Nora over.

He looks at his dad and tries to convey what he’s thinking, but the slightly pained look on his face says that he already knows. He passes the baby-- his baby-- to the EMT and his Dad wraps a solid arm around his shoulders. Giving him a squeeze, the sheriff says,

“You’re only allowed to call me Grandpa Stilinski when I retire, you got that?”

 

***

 

That night, all of them sleep in Melissa’s living room like they used to, making the space in front of the television a den of pillows and cushions, a movie playing inanely in the background. His dad has even stayed the night, without bothering to pretend that he’s crashing in the guest room this time.

Given the circumstances, Stiles is surprised by the feeling of warmth and ease that settles around them in the dark. He lies on the couch with Nora asleep on his chest, drooling steadily onto his t-shirt. The snores of his whole pack surround them, but he knows he won’t sleep tonight, no matter how safe they are here.

Derek is awake, too. Stiles has his feet in his lap on the other end of the couch and he can feel the feather light touch of Derek’s thumb circling his ankle. He decides to speak, just a breath of a whisper.

“Thanks for tonight.”

Derek’s ears quirk, but he doesn’t turn to look at Stiles. His eyes reflect the blueish light from Melissa’s television. “Don’t,” he says.

“Don’t what? Thank you for taking that guy out? Too bad-- thank you.”

Derek shakes his head a little. “It wouldn’t have been necessary if it wasn’t for me in the first place.”

Stiles sighs deeply. Classic Derek. “We were _both_ supposed to be watching her. Plus, he had magic on his side.”

Derek is quiet for a long time after that, but his jaw keeps twitching and clenching, telling Stiles that he’s working out what he wants to say. Eventually, when the movie’s final credits begin to roll and darken the room, he says, “do you remember Jennifer?”

Stiles doesn’t answer at first, but when the silence gets too pensive, he finally says, “of course I remember.”

“Do you remember what she told me? Back when she was trying to continue all those sacrifices. Do you remember what she said about Paige?”

Stiles nods. This feels like dangerous, uncharted territory. When has Derek ever really talked about any of it? Stiles only knows his secrets through the supernatural grapevines, and even then, it’s all murky with Peter’s rhetoric. Derek has always been stubbornly silent about the past, but Stiles gets the feeling like despite this, he has never let it go. The past follows Derek around like a shadow, tailing at the end of his conversations, always unspoken but completely present.

“I made the first sacrifice to the Nemeton.” Derek looks down at his hands which have stopped absently caressing Stiles as if he’s only just realized he was doing it. “I woke it up. I started...everything. No matter what, it all comes back to that.”

“I think you’re giving yourself too much credit.” Stiles sits up a little, gently tucking Nora into his elbow. “Okay, maybe you threw a little gas on the fire, but if it wasn’t you, it would have been someone else, right? You heard what that asshole said tonight-- that tree stump is ancient.. _.all-powerful_ , and clearly it’s not going gently into the night, so…” He stops to look at the television screen, now looping the DVD menu. “Maybe we’re all just pawns in that.”

Derek snorts at this unexpectedly. “You and the chess metaphors.”

Stiles gives him half a quiet laugh and lets the conversation fade away. Derek’s brooding heart doesn’t seem to be in it, and maybe that’s a good sign. Maybe he’s done with the past.  Below them, Malia mumbles something in her sleep, followed by a quiet growl. Kira and Scott remain silently spooning next to her. Baby Jack is near their heads, sleeping in his Fischer Price chair that rocks from side to side with a mobile spinning above him. Stiles takes a huge lungful of air in and slowly breathes it out. Maybe he will get some sleep tonight, after all.

“Derek, can you do me a favor?”

“Yeah,” he replies instantly.

“Hold her for a while?”

Derek doesn’t hesitate to reach out. Stiles passes his daughter over to him in the dark, and for the first time since he got her back in her arms, he isn’t scared to let her go.

 

***

 

“I downloaded Skype onto your phone,” Stiles tells his dad as they load the trunk of the jeep. He’s leaving with significantly more stuff than he came with, including a real live infant.

His dad grunts in reply. Normally, he’d be one to refuse all that “useless technology” seeing as the last time he’d updated his phone, it had been to install a surveillance camera in Stiles’ room for the sole purpose of keeping an eye out for a murdering demon. Stiles knows that he’ll comply with the Skype updates because he wants to see how big Nora will get in the coming months. Total grandpa.

“You sure you’ve got everything?”

“We’re good.”

His dad has that half-frown face full of concern and sadness that he hates. In an effort to distract him, Stiles drops Nora into his arms and turns so they can have their own little goodbyes. His dad’s face instantly brightens. As Stiles throws his last duffle into the back seat, he realizes that he actually has forgotten something. Nora’s bassinet.

“I gotta run upstairs,” he says, jogging up the front steps. He wants to get on the road now before the rush hour traffic hits the highways and there’s suddenly this sense of urgency. He kind of wants to get out of Beacon Hills instantly, wishing he could just snap his fingers and be in the complacent, boring interior of his apartment in San Francisco right then and there.

When he opens the door to his childhood bedroom, Derek is there near the open window.

“Did you seriously sneak in through the window again?”

Derek shrugs as if to say, _old habits die hard_. Stiles chuckles as he moves over to the bassinet, which he will have to dissemble in order to fit into his car.

“Help me take this down?”

Derek nods and moves to crouch down next to the yellow and blue contraption. Stiles looks around for the building instructions, but Derek has already taken apart the support legs by the time he turns around. He’d forgotten that it had been Derek who had built this thing in the first place. Stiles kneels down to help him, even though he’s basically useless. Derek had been the one to build all of Nora’s things. He knew which formula to buy. He knew what size of diaper she would be, what fabrics make the most comfortable onesies, what baby cream is better for sensitive skin. He’s the only one who could relax her tantrums. Stiles is hit with a sudden flash of anxiety and Derek shifts as if he can smell it in the air, which he definitely can.

“You know, I…” he starts, taking a few of the bassinet’s parts and putting them aside. “I don’t know how to do any of this stuff. I mean, I don’t know actually know what I’m gonna do without you.” He adds a half-assed laugh at the end to make it sound less desperate.

Derek looks up at Stiles and then down again, quickly. “You’ll figure it out, Stiles.”

“Yeah, but…” He doesn’t know how to say it. He doesn’t know how to put it into words.

Derek barely seems to be listening, loudly snapping the adjustable pieces off the bassinet and folding them down deftly, then moving onto another part without a glance in Stiles direction. He’s going too fast, probably. He might break the thing. “Would you stop for a second?” he almost shouts.

Derek stops, dropping the pieces near his feet. He finally looks back up at Stiles, only for a second, face all full of frustration and maybe a bit of Derek’s classic anger. Then he darts forward and slams Stiles’ mouth onto his.

Stiles' first reaction is to pull away sharply. He takes a long look at Derek. He's not a werewolf, but he can hear Derek's heart thundering in the quiet room. Stiles releases a breath he didn’t know he was holding and fumbles his way forward until Derek topples over a little, legs opening for Stiles to crawl through. Then he moves his mouth back to fit over Derek's softer this time, but still urgent and furious somehow. This is what he’s been waiting for, maybe for a long time now, but it’s still odd to feel Derek’s lips and tongue working him open like they’re not old friends, like they’re not the same people they were ten years ago. Maybe they really aren’t. Stiles lets out a breathy groan and moves his head in tandem with Derek, pushing and pulling for more of him, more air, more lips, more of his heat, more, more, more.

Derek’s legs encircle him, tightening around Stiles from where he kneels between them. His hands don’t roam, just stay holding Stiles in place at his sides, fingers twitching on his flank like he’s afraid to move them. He feels wet heat pooling and overflowing at the base of his spine, blood rushing, heart fluttering. 

Stiles might combust from the suddenness of it, from how good Derek feels under him, from the unadulterated want that just screams through his chest like it just woke up. He tries to get it under control and reel himself in, thinking about his Dad downstairs still. He takes a breath of hot, shared air, slowly pulling back from Derek until their lips softly let go of each other. When he opens his eyes, Derek is still there.

“Don’t run away right now, okay?” he says quickly.

Derek huffs a little as though he's offended. “I’m not.”

“Well, you have a tendency to…” Stiles waves his hands around, not wanting to say the cliche. _You have a tendency to run from your feelings._

“It’s okay.” It might be the softest thing to ever come out of Derek’s mouth. "I want..." Derek doesn't tell him exactly what he wants, but he wraps his arms tightly around Stiles' lower back, fingers dipping under his shirt a little, close to cupping his ass. Stiles leans into it. 

He is still a little out of breath, but he scrambles to get the words out. “Look, this-- this means that I can’t not see you for three years while you run around in South America, alright? This means that you have to stay--”

“I could come with you.”

“What?”

“To San Francisco.” Derek swallows. He seems nervous. “I could come with you.”

“That’s a big first step.” Stiles moves in closer, tightens his grip on Derek’s body so he knows that Stiles isn’t pulling away. It’s just a little crazy, that’s all. Ten minutes changes a lot. 

“It’s not a first step,” Derek says, rolling his eyes. "I've been..." He trails off to press a kiss on Stiles' exposed neck, near his adam's apple. It's sweet and gentle, but Stiles needs him to use his words right now. 

"You've been what?" 

"Thinking about it. About you leaving and Nora leaving and..." Derek shakes his head. "Thinking about what I could do to make you stay." 

Stiles kisses him again because, no, it’s not a first step. Actually it feels like they were both pushed down a steep hill that night when they found Nora, and they’ve been rolling down together since day one. It feels now like their momentum is slowing, finally, and they can get back on their feet. He wants to get back up and have Derek beside him. And maybe he should be more worried about the past, about the fact that this is Derek Hale in his arms, of all people, but he just isn't. This is the way things are now and it feels good. It feels safe. 

“You love her, don’t you?” Stiles says, pulling back to rest his head on Derek’s shoulder. He feels Derek’s arms move to hold him in place. “You love her like I love her.”

Derek nods once, slowly, rough stubble against Stiles’ forehead.

“So come with us.”


	3. epilogue

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> IT'S DONE. 
> 
> Thanks for reading this far! 
> 
>  
> 
> [Come hang out on tumblr](twinkwolf.tumblr.com)

Morning sex is about the only sex that exists these days, so Stiles usually likes to get Dererk up extra early to roll around in the sheets, come, and then fall back asleep for another hour before the kids get up. Today is especially tricky, seeing as they have to be twice as quiet. Melissa and the Sheriff are just on the other side of the wall.

“Yeah,” Stiles sighs. Derek softly shushes him as he moves deeper, angling Stiles’ leg so that his knee is pressed to his chest and Derek can kneel and move above him without the awkward tangle of limbs. They have this down pat.

Derek bites his chest which means he’s close, and Stiles wants them to get off together quickly, so he starts working his hand over his own cock faster. Derek’s sex-addled brain gets the memo and soon they’re both touching Stiles, Derek’s thumb working over him fast and with expertise. Fourteen years of this and Stiles still can’t get over how hard Derek can make him come, how hot the whole thing is, even with their greying hair and saggy bits coming through.

Stiles’ insides coil tightly, and because they’re trying to be fast, he doesn’t drag it out or let the feeling hover. He melts into it, lets it happen, and right as Derek softly curses and comes, stuttering against his prostate, Stiles feels his muscles let go and spasm while he shoots white over Derek’s hand.

“Damn,” he says after a second. He winces as Derek pulls out, reaching behind him to grab tissues and clean the mess up before it gets on the sheets. He hasn’t left jizz stains on these sheets since high school and he’s not about to start back up again.

“You shower first,” Derek says. Normally they’d shower together because they have a massive glass box in their master bathroom, but there’s no way they’re both fitting in the tiny shower in the tiny bathroom off Stiles’ childhood bedroom.

After, when he’s towelling off, he hears the distant familiar sound of Ben and Nora bickering downstairs with Melissa’s hard voice cutting through the chatter. Derek steps into the bathroom and starts the shower back up as Stiles wipes the condensation from the mirror. to shave.

It’s quiet between them today. It has been since they got into Beacon Hills last night and put the kids to sleep in the guest room. They’re both a little scared about this day. It’s been a long time coming. Derek steps out of the shower, wrapping the towel around him. He comes up behind Stiles to wrap his arms around his middle, chin resting on Stiles’ shoulder.

“Are you okay?” he asks, kissing Stiles’ neck.

“Yeah. Yeah. It’s just... I never thought we’d actually be going back there, you know?”

Derek doesn’t say anything for a while. He keeps feathering Stiles’ shoulder with small kisses and soft hums. When the grumbling sounds of the Sheriff getting up and ready start to drift through the walls, Derek tightens his arms for a second and tells him, “I love you. It’s going to be okay.”

Downstairs, the fighting starts back up as soon as Stiles steps into the kitchen.

“Dad, she took the rest of the count chocula and I have to have raisin bran,” Ben says twisting in his seat.

“Why in the hell are you buying Dad count chocula?” he asks Melissa. She’s all dressed in her scrubs, skimming through the morning paper and sipping her coffee. She’s set to retire in the next year or so, but Stiles doubts she’ll actually do it. She used to joke that they would have to bury her in scrubs.

“Nora found his secret stash behind the pastry flour in the pantry. I told her to go nuts.”

Stiles sighs.

“But Dad, _I_ didn’t get any,” Ben pouts. Seven years old is a difficult age.

“ _You_ are spending the day with your cousins and you know Uncle Scott is going to load you up with ice cream as soon as Andrew throws a temper tantrum.” Stiles moves around to grab an apple from the table. “So eat your raisin bran.”

Nora drinks the milk from her cereal bowl while rolling her eyes at her brother. Sometimes, she’s all Derek.

“You should be eating raisin bran too, kid,” he says to Nora. “Everyone in this house should be eating raisin bran. It’s full of fiber.”

“Dad, I think I can pick my own breakfast cereals. You know, I am going into high school next week. Maybe you can finally teach me how to tie my shoelaces, too!” she bites with a fake smile and another roll of her eyes

“Don’t remind me that you start high school next week,” Derek says as he strolls into the kitchen. He goes straight for the coffee.

“You gotta accept it, Pops,” she says, getting up to drop her bowl in the sink.

As Ben starts to wax poetic about the topping he plans to get on his sundae with Uncle Scott, the Sheriff finally makes his entrance into the kitchen. He gives them all a wrinkly smile. “Morning. What did I miss?”

“They’re planning an intervention for you, Grandpa,” Nora pipes up as Derek attempts to plant a kiss on the top of her head. She swats him away, but leans into him all the same.

“Yes, we are in fact. It’s a serious problem and it’s tearing this family apart.” Stiles holds up the empty count chocula box. “Care to explain?”

Melissa looks up from her paper to smirk at the Sheriff and he looks at her with nothing but betrayal.

“It’s just for every once and a while...keeps the cravings at bay.”

“Spoken like a true addict.” Stiles shakes his head.

 

***

 

Later, when the grandparents have gone off to work and Kira has picked Ben up for the day, Derek, Nora, and Stiles get in the car and drive out to the woods. From the back seat, Nora quietly listens to music on her phone, watching out of the window as the trees move past them. When they drive as far as the path will take them, Stiles shuts off the car and all three of them sit in silence for a moment. Derek turns around to look at his daughter.

“Are you sure you still want to do this?”

Nora carefully folds up her headphones and tucks the phone into her pocket. She runs a hand through her short sandy hair. It’s neither the color of Derek’s or Stiles’. She doesn’t have many features similar to theirs. Her eyes are round and big, unlike her parent's almond shaped ones, or Ben’s, who was conceived with a surrogate and Derek’s DNA. Her lips are small, chin sharp, face heart shaped. She’s short and more plump than Stiles had been at her age. She has dark blue eyes.

She’s their daughter, though, no matter what she looks like. She’s almost perfectly half Stiles and half Derek. Her sarcasm goes above and beyond Stiles’ at any given day, and she can be just as obsessive as him, throwing hours and hours into whatever topic holds her interest at the time.

When she’s upset, angry or hurt, she tends to go quiet and distant like Derek. Right now, she’s pretty quiet.

“I want to see it,” she finally says. Stiles shifts the glasses back up his nose and nods once. They’re going to do this because Nora asked.

It’s a shorter walk than Stiles remembers it. Maybe it’s because it’s daylight out and he can see the whole forest ahead of him. Or maybe it’s because nothing is chasing them for once.

Derek slips his hand into Stiles’ as they walk. They can feel Nora sidestepping over the

fallen branches and foliage of the woods behind them. She’s not used to the preserve like Derek and Stiles are. She grew up with concrete and cars, with a foggy view of the stars, and very little woods to speak of. When they visit Beacon Hills for holidays and the like, the kids are not allowed out in the woods by themselves. And when they are, it’s usually on full moons. More often than not, Nora opts to stay behind when Derek, Scott and Ben come out here. She’s not a werewolf like them so these trees, this territory never had the same appeal. Stiles opts to stay behind most times as well.

When they get there, Stiles stops and Nora runs into his back. “This is it.”

Nora pushes her dad aside with fascination and approaches the nemeton. Part of him wants to yell out for her to not get so close, but he holds it at bay.

After a moment, she says, “I thought it would be…”

“It doesn’t look like much now. But it caused a lot of damage once upon a time,” Stiles tells her.

She reaches down and touches the top of the stump. “This is where you found me?”

Derek moves forward, over to the spot where Nora’s mother had been lying dead that night. “No. It was right here.”

Nora moves over to Derek. His arm twitches like he wants to wrap it around her, but he gives her space.

“And my mom was…” she looks to Stiles for an answer.

“She was right there, too. You know the story.”

Nora nods. She grew up with a very benevolent and clean version of her adoption, but it wasn’t until last year, when she started talking with Lydia, started digging for the real answers, started finding out about all the dangerous shit that went down before she was born, when they finally just sat her down and told her the whole story. She’s been begging to come out here every since and take a look at the thing that started her life and ended her mother’s.

Nora moves around to the other side of the tree. “I feel bad for her.”

“We all did,” Derek says.

“Do you think she would have kept me? If, you know, I’d been born in a hospital.”

Stiles and Derek make eye contact for a brief moment. Stiles shrugs. “I don’t know, kiddo.”

“It’s stupid to wonder, I know, but…”

“It’s not stupid,” Derek says.

She pouts a little, eyes watering and looking at Derek. Then, she lifts her foot and gives the tree stump a heavy, thudding kick. Just one. She moves back and crosses her arms, breathing heavily like she’s trying not to freak out. Stiles goes right to her, Derek close behind, and when he has his arms around her, she starts to really cry, wrapping her arms around his back tight. He looks up over her head, rocking her back and forth, and Derek is there, watching with concern.

He hopes this is cathartic for her, or something. To Stiles, it’s just sad and conflicted. The circumstances around her birth are fucked up, but look at what he got out of it. He got his family. Try as he might, he can’t resent that. He can only resent the way it makes his baby feel.

She slows down after a second and wipes at her eyes. Sniffling, she looks between the both of them. “It’s good that you found me.”

Derek bends down to look at her in the face, wiping her tears with the pad of his thumbs. “Finding you was the best thing that ever happened to us.”  

 

***

 

In the car ride back to San Francisco that night, Nora is still quiet and lorn, but that all changes when Ben throws up all over the back seat from overdosing on ice cream. They have to pull off on the side of the highway and clean everything up with a handful of wet naps. As gross as it is, it’s also strangely hilarious. Stiles has to hold up a blanket so that Nora can change her clothes behind it while Derek just changes Ben behind the car, and none of them (except Ben, who keeps complaining that they’re making fun of him) can stop laughing at the situation.

“I’m never eating sundaes again, ever,” Ben says after they’ve gotten back on the road, all of the windows down to drown out the smell. “Ever, ever, ever.”

“I’m gonna hold you to that, buddy,” Derek says.

“I bet he won’t last three days. There’s still half a tub of Peanut Butter Mud Puddle in the freezer at home,” Nora says.

“Nuh-uh. I don’t want any ever again.”

“You’re on, then.”

Back at home, Stiles pulls the half empty tub of ice cream out and three spoons. They gather on the couch and watch an old re-run on the Disney channel while digging into the peanut buttery goodness before bed. Ben sits at the other end of the couch in protest of the ice cream with his arms crossed, but after about ten minutes, he crawls onto Derek’s lap and begs for just one bite.

Nora throws up her hands and demands a prize for winning the bet. They promise to buy her the expensive noise cancelling headphones she’s been asking for all summer, which they were planning on getting her anyway.

At the end of the day, nothing has really changed. He didn’t know why he thought it might be different. This has always been their lives. Their roots are a little twisted, a little dark, but Stiles knows that it doesn’t matter. They’ve grown up tall, and lush, and naturally.

With Nora, and Ben, and Derek, it’s better and bigger than any ancient Nemeton could ever be.


End file.
